Six Tips for Owning and Operating Multiple Repair Locations

If your business has been doing well, you may be thinking about expansion - If so, that’s great news! After some market research and goal-setting, you may be well on your way to opening another storefront (or two!). Here are a few tips to keep in mind when opening a new location, along with best practices for managing multiple locations.

Finding a Location

One of the first things to think about is finding a good location for your second store. Rent will be your biggest expense each month, and you need to have an idea of what you’ll be paying when figuring out financing and budgeting (more on this later).

Here are some things to consider when looking at a potential location:

• Population - How many people live in the area? A higher population doesn’t always mean you will be more successful; we’ve seen stores located in very small towns still do $35k in revenue each month.
• Demographics - Look more into the people that live in the area. How much do they make? How old are they? Make sure this aligns with your target audience and pricing structure.
• Traffic - High traffic areas are usually good to look at, but low traffic areas aren’t always bad either. If you’re in an area with less foot traffic, put more money into online ads rather than bigger signage outside.
• Competition - Are there any repair locations already in the area? What about carrier stores or Apple Stores? Sometimes, these can be used to your advantage, depending on how well you market your business and services.
• Distance - How far away is this new location from your first one? You don’t want to cannibalize your own sales and compete with yourself, but you also don’t want to give yourself a three-hour commute every day if you plan to visit both locations.

Perfecting Your Process

If you were to go on a much-needed vacation for a week, would your store be able to function without you? Do you have your processes documented well enough for someone to step in and keep things running smoothly?

When opening your second location, duplicating your processes will be your first step. Now is a great time to take a look at all of your business processes and document them into a training guide. You won’t be around your first location while the second gets up and running, so make sure that you have someone trustworthy running things at your first location.

Hiring & Culture

You should think about hiring or promoting some existing employees (ones that you trust) to act as managers for each location. This will help you take a step back to focus on high-level tasks, such as business development or diversification. However, many stores struggle with finding high-quality, long-term employees.

It’s important to know what other technicians or managers in your market are currently making so that you can offer a competitive rate. If you offer benefits like health insurance or sales commission, you can adjust pay based on that.

What are some qualities to look for in a good employee? Here are some things to think about:

• Previous experience - This can be industry-related or just management in general.
• Progression in previous position - Did they move up the ladder at their last job? This can be an indication of a strong worker.
• Sales skills - These are hard to teach, so look for someone that has done well in sales previously.
• People person - Look for someone that is easy to talk to, but make sure you allow them to open up first. Interviews can be nerve-wracking for candidates, so make them feel comfortable and like they’re having a conversation. You want to hire someone that would be a good leader, and that would help shape the culture of your business.

Create a culture of empowerment with all employees that work for your brand. This will give them the confidence to make decisions when you’re not around. What worked for us when we were managing 17 repair locations in the past was having one central employee responsible for stock ordering and returns. This allowed each store manager to do carrier runs, networking, and even more business development.

Cash Flow & Inventory Management

Don’t forget to think about cash flow! Make sure that your first location is profitable enough to support the second location while it’s getting started. If not, you should look into other financing options for stock orders, like Behalf.

If you’re not currently using an inventory management software like RepairQ or RepairShopr, now is the time to sign up. You need a powerful system that will track orders, returns, inventory, and sales so that you can gauge the performance of each location, and make the necessary changes.

Marketing Your New Location

Are you a member of your community’s Chamber of Commerce? If not, now is a great time to join. Your local Chamber of Commerce can provide you with networking opportunities, special promotions to participate in, and many other resources to help you market and grow your business. As a member, you can also host a ribbon cutting event through your Chamber for your new location. This is great for PR and general awareness in your community.

Don’t forget to market your new location online! Be sure to set up social accounts for this new storefront, and create a Facebook event for the grand opening and/or ribbon cutting. Set up a Google My Business account to get your new location’s information in front of more people.

Tools & Resources

As the owner of multiple repair locations, there are a ton of time-saving tools and resources that you can use to keep things running smoothly and efficiently. Here are some that you may not have thought of:

• Communication: Use a platform like Slack or Facebook groups to effectively communicate with your managers and employees at each location. You want to make sure that each location is on the same page in order to prevent mixed messaging across your brand. As Square writes, “A lack of communication amongst locations can create unhealthy competition that is detrimental to your business.”
• Ordering: Ordering stock for each location can easily become a nightmare if you don’t have the right systems in place. Hunting down a part for a special order in your suppliers’ enormous catalogs can take away time from what really matters. Check out features that help reduce ordering times, like Mobile Defenders’ Cart Autosettle.
• Reporting: Even if you’re not the “numbers type” of person, it’s important to be collecting and monitoring the data associated with measuring success for each location. Know that your newest location in a smaller town a few miles away may not perform as well as your first store in the heart of the city. It’s important to look at trends and set baseline metrics for sales, returns/reworks, and inventory numbers. Your inventory management system may provide a nice top-level view of the performance of all locations, but you can also use tools like Mobile Defenders’ Multi-Account Overview on the Customer Dashboard to view numbers on a part supplier level.

Expanding and operating multiple storefronts will require more of your time if you’re more of a hands-on owner. However, with the right planning upfront, as well as utilizing some of the tools listed above to their full potential, you can still get home in time for dinner… at least for most nights!